Saturday, July 02, 2011

July 3, 2011 (Sunday) at 11-something p.m. ZERO DEFEX will play at X-Day 14 at the Wisteria Campground near Athens, Ohio

July 6 & 7, 2011 (Wed & Thu) I will be speaking and leading workshops at Starwood, also at the Wisteria Campground

I believe these are both listed wrong on my Book Tour Page. Unfortunately the files with which I created that page are now lost. So I'll have to recreate the entire page from scratch to correct anything on it. I'll get to that...

Both of these events are far out of the range of the kinds of events either I or the band usually do. We're not really hippie-in-the-woods kind of people. So I'm a little nervous as to how they'll turn out. Does a bear poop in the woods? Yes. But I do not usually poop in the woods.

Apparently people often go to these things "sky clad." I will not be sky clad. I'm not sure how much I want to see sky clad hippies with beer guts boppin' around at the drum circle. But I guess I'm gonna see a lot of that.

X-Day (but not Starwood) is a festival run by the Church of the Subgenius. The Church of the Subgenius is a brilliant parody of cults and organized religions that is always tottering on the edge of becoming either a cult or an organized religion itself. Each year the leader of the church predicts that aliens will descend in a fleet of UFOs to pick up the members of the church and blast everyone else in the world to smithereens. Each year the members meet to await the saucers. Each year the saucers fail to arrive. And each year the leader of the church makes a new excuse as to why it didn't happen this year and promises that next year the aliens will come for sure.

I'm a great believer in robbing bad things of their power by making fun of them. So I'm all for the Church of the Subgenius. For all their lunacy, some of the philosophy in their books is pretty deep. And some is just goofball nonsense.

Last night Zero Defex played at Thursday's Lounge in Akron. In attendance was our original guitarist Tommy Strange. He said we played too fast.

My wife is pagan and her I and go to Convocation in Detroit, very similar to Starwood. Both are pagan gaterings, but hippieness tends to still seep in everywhere. At least Convocation is in a hotel. Working bathrooms and no skyclad allowed!

If you end up enjoying Starwood, check out Convocation sometime. I always enjoy myself just because it's a good community.

Robert Anton Wilson was a Pope in the Church of the Subgenius. I personally once-upon-a-time became a "mail-order minister" via Ivan Stang's WEIRDNESS BY MAIL.. in order to legally marry two atheist friends and later a pagan couple.

Our Flying Spaghetti Monster,Who art in orbit around Ramen 324,Hallowed be thy Noodly Appendage.Thy Pasta al dente, They Sauce be done,On earth as it is on dishes.Give us this day our daily meatball,And forgive us our diets,As we forgive those who eat fried chicken.And lead us not into starvation,But deliver us from tofu.For thine is the Meatballs,And the Pasta,And the Sauce,Now and forever.

RAmen.

“Let us sing praise to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, for He is a loving God. Of His might and dominion, there is no compare; of His mercy and deliciousness, there is no equal. No other god can challenge Him; in the taste test, He is invincible. Through His pasta, He has blessed us with everlasting life, and holy is His Name. For He is the Flying Spaghetti Monster: the One, True, and Most High God, creator of man and midgit, giver of pasta, giver of sauce, from age to holy age; not created He was, but ever He lives, through the glory of spaghetti, now and forever. R'Amen.” ~ Ishmali Camuwundra on the Flying Spaghetti Monster

Anonymous and Anonymous were once traveling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was still falling.

Coming around a bend, they met an old man who appeared to be stuck in the mud.

"Old people are so stupid!" said Anonymous. He lifted the old man in his arms and carried him over the mud. "Thank you, young man. But I wasn't stuck. Let me explain..." began the old man. "Just shut the fuck up, OK?" replied Anonymous, rudely.

Anonymous did not speak again until that night when they reached a lodging house. Then he no longer could restrain himself. "We young men shouldn't waste our time with old farts like that," he told Anonymous. "It's a waste of time. Why did you bother?"

"I left the old man there," said Anonymous. "Are you still carrying him?"

COMMENTARY: Is the old man left behind? If you say "Yes" you may fall into error. If you say "No" you are stuck in the mud. Just shut the fuck up, OK?

We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.

—George Orwell (1946)

A great nation is like a great man:When he makes a mistake, he realizes it.Having realized it, he admits it.Having admitted it, he corrects it.He considers those who point out his faultsas his most benevolent teachers.

"We all have, intentionally or unintentionally, hurt another person who will forever regard us as the villain, the betrayer, the scoundrel. And we have all felt the sting of being on the receiving end of an act of injustice, nursing a wound that never seems to fully heal. The remarkable thing about self-justification is that it allows us to shift from one role to the other and back again in the blink of an eye, without applying what we have learned from one role to the other."